Hi,
I was wondering if the 3d Renders I see everywhere, like on www.pathfinderminis.com are considered Public Domain? I see everyone on Ebay using them for advetising as well?
Thanks!
Chief Technical Officer
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The 3D renders that WizKids creates to promote the Pathfinder Battles miniatures line are definitely not "public domain"—that's a term that specifically means nobody can own them. Legally, Paizo owns the copyrights to those images.
As with most commercial product images from almost every publisher or manufacturer in pretty much every industry, they are released under the understanding that they can be used to promote sales of the product depicted without requiring specific approval or attribution. But that doesn't mean they can be used by anyone for any purpose.
If you would like to use them outside of that purpose, I would point you to our Community Use Policy, which tells you how you may be able to use the ones that have been used in the Paizo blog.
Apart from that, you would be limited to legal "Fair Use" under copyright law, which is a tricky thing to sort out; I would strongly suggest seeking the advice of an intellectual properties attorney before you attempt to do that. (To get some idea of how complicated Fair Use is, you might want to look at this Stanford University examination of the topic.) Also, note that I am not an attorney and therefore cannot provide you with legally useful advice in this matter.
Thanks for the response Vic, much appreciated. Nah I won't use them other than eBay then. Sad though, they would have been perfect pictures for the monster stat cards I am making for my minis.
Thanks again for the details.